And Why You Should Support Your Local Farmers, Even If You Are One!
Full disclosure: My Bobo is a few years older, as tall as I am, and about one hundred pounds heavier now. His blueberry intake has likewise increased mightily...
Riley Creek Blueberry Farm is located in Laclede, Idaho. Every year for the last twelve years or so I have driven up to the little mill town and wandered out into the six acres of blueberry awesomeness.
Here are some of my favorite attributes of this little farm:
It was started by a teacher who left his occupation to seek out his dream.
The setting is super relaxed and chill. You want to bring your dog? That's cool. Do you have a "special" relative that has no public censorship ability. Bring em along! Picking berries at the Riley Creek patch feels like going out into your own back yard. There is this welcoming vibe that really permeates the place.
As you exit your car, you walk up and grab some red buckets out of the stack, and head out into the patch. Each cultivar has a wooden sign at the end of the first row that tells you what type of berry is before you. Sometimes there is a person to tell you what to do, other times there is not, which brings me to another favorite thing about the farm:
You weigh and pay for your berries on the honor system.
It's so very cool to walk up to the little shack, weigh your berries on the provided scale, log the weight in the "Weighed and Paid" book, and bag your berries in the graciously provided zipper freezer bags.
The price of the berries for U-pick in 2016 was $2.50/lb, and the four people in my family usually pick our yearly berry need of forty pounds (My not-so little any more Hawaiians love fruit) in about an hour. Okay, if I am honest I pick most of that because I am some sort of weirdo that doesn't like to eat berries while I pick. You may all throw digital mockery in my direction, I am used to it in the real life form.
It's not uncommon to see generations of family members out in the patch. The conversations that one overhears keep any sort of boredom at bay if you aren't content to be out in a beautiful blueberry field early in the day. There is something so fulfilling; about filling a bucket with berries, I don't think that I will ever tire of it.
Another thing that I won't ever tire of is supporting other small farmers and ranchers. It is truly a labor of love to engage in any form of agriculture, especially on a small scale. I could easily grow blueberries, but there is something fulfilling about buying something from a member of the community that has put so much labor and passion into carving out their niche.
While I do strive to be self-sufficient, I believe it is important to learn to rely on and be aware of other people's strengths and appreciate the gifts that they offer the community. The energy that I don't have to put into growing blueberries can be spent on another aspect of production on my farm. I hope to one day be as good a steward of agriculture to my community with whatever my niche is as the folks that run Riley Creek Blueberry Farm.
And as always, the images in this post were taken on the author's blueberry stained iPhone.